


Alpha and omega

by Bitterblue



Series: Experimental Theology [6]
Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: F/F, Orphan Black AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-20
Updated: 2014-06-20
Packaged: 2018-02-05 11:08:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1816384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bitterblue/pseuds/Bitterblue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The light was slipping languorously into twilight when Cosima woke. In the moment before she opened her eyes, breath caught, she realized that she was alone, her exhalation the only noise in the stillness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Alpha and omega

The light was slipping languorously into twilight when Cosima woke. In the moment before she opened her eyes, breath caught, she realized that she was alone, her exhalation the only noise in the stillness. Then Prospero shifted beneath the bed, rumbling a noise half purr and half displeasure, and both sat up.

The pillow next to her was cold, and most of what she had helped neaten was back in heaps on the floor. Panic rose unbidden in her throat. Delphine was in danger. She had been taken away. They had been  _caught_. She reached for her glasses, discarded in the moment when Delphine had reached under her shirt, and found them laying on the desk, strewn over with papers once again. Slipping them on, the words clarified into meaning. Someone had clearly been through these.  _How did I sleep through this?_

She stood with a groan, finding her discarded clothing and dressing with haste.  _Missing_. Prospero watched her, waiting by the door, his impatience concealed except for the faint flicker of the tip of his tail. Cosima slung her coat around her shoulders, opened the door, and stepped into the now-lit hallway and the dirty gleam of rows of naphtha sconces. She couldn't have slept long; the tops of the trees were ablaze with the last stretching reaches of sunlight.  _How did I sleep while she disappeared?_

The alethiometer would have an answer. She might not understand it, but she could ask. If she could just work out how to formulate a question she would grasp the answer to, it would work. It had to work.

Cosima reached into her pocket and found naught but the silk lining.

For a moment, she was suspended, unable to think, unable to comprehend. Then, as if it were a wave in a stormy sea, or a gust of sudden wind, or the intense heat of corrosion, Cosima understood. She did not need to consult the alethiometer, because it had answered this question days before.

 _Serpent_.

They stood together, girl and daemon, still as dust as the sun set. Hollow, she turned and stepped back into Delphine's room. The papers left on the desk were haphazard now, no longer in the neat little piles she had created, and she flicked through them intently. There was an address. There would be an address. If Delphine thought she could take without consequence, she had been sorely mistaken.

 

It glinted as she unwrapped it, a gleaming gold. Dragon's treasure, perhaps. The case opened with an audible  _snick_ , revealing the workings. If she looked just so out of the corner of her eyes, she thought she could almost see the Dust touching it, sending the free hand drifting about the same way the sunlight set her radiometer in motion. It wasn't as beautiful as the other two she had seen, but she had not been allowed to touch those and this one, now, was hers. She could forgive a haphazard painter his sins.

Years of work had brought the alethiometer here; years of formulating her first question. Carefully, she twisted the crowns for each hand, settling them into place.  _Compass. Bird. Baby._

Just out of the edge of her vision, Dust settled across her shoulders like a mantle, down her arms like the first touch of frost on a windowpane, down her fingertips like the slick of icing sugar, and into the machine as if it were alive. At last, the fourth hand shifted. She watched, rapt. It  _worked_. It worked. It answered her. She almost believed these images would be burnt into the back of her eyelids for eternity.  _Owl. Walled garden. Alpha and omega._

She would need the book to understand, but that was a small inconvenience. It was nothing at all.

Leontes landed on her shoulder with a rustle of wings, his feet chill from the outside.

"You've got it working, then? There's trouble coming, I think. Probably a day away, still, but trouble none the less." Absently, Rachel reached up to stroke the back of his head with her free hand, gaze still fixed on the alethiometer as it repeated the pattern of her answer. He made a sort of sniffing laugh noise. "I tell you trouble and you don't even  _care_."

"No," she protested, eyes flicking to the shoulder where he sat and then back to the alethiometer. "I do care. Tell me, then."

So he did.

 

The stone buildings at Oxford made Cosima feel faintly warm with a sort of enchanted, childish delight. The stone buildings at the Université de Theologie, in Lille, did not; austere and cold down to the stone itself, Cosima found herself repressing a shudder. Even the sun seemed to be colder, its light faint and white through overcast skies prone to drizzle. She resolutely set her shoulders, for what she thought might have been the second or twentieth time since leaving Oxford early that morning for Dover and its ferry to France. The paper in her hand with an address at the university was crumpled from repeated readings. Prospero, next to her, looked as miserable as she felt, ears pressed back to his skull and mouth permanently dragged into the moment before a hiss.

It had taken longer than she wanted to leave, but with the Professor gone to Bern she had been unsure who to contact about her departure. In the end, she had sought out the Mistress of St Hilda's and taken a leave of absence for the rest of the semester.  _To do research in France. At Lille, yes. State of the art laboratories and active in the field of cellular-Dust interactions._  Delphine had a three day head start, and probably would be gone from here, if she had come here at all. Still, it was a place to begin.

Ignoring the strange looks she received as she headed deeper into the university--what an  _insular_  place--Cosima let out a breath she didn't know she had been holding when her eye caught on a small sign at the corner of a building. This one. Delphine lived here, or at least she had, once.

 

Preoccupied with her mental list of laboratory supplies to be ordered, Delphine pushed open the surprisingly unlocked door to her room and stopped, Laurent behind her.

Her back to the door, a dark-haired young woman was shuffling through the papers on her desk. Hair pulled back in a bun, black coat sombre, she could have been Cosima. It made Delphine's heart ache, just a little, a twinge of regret.

"Rachel, what are you doing in my room?"

The woman turned, face impassive. "Who's Rachel?"

And, at the same time, from behind her, "Who's this?"

Careful not to touch Laurent, Rachel stepped around Delphine and into the room. She eyed the other woman, their expressions unreadable and mirrored. Finally she smiled, a predatory glint to her teeth and eyes, and turned back to face Delphine.

"You said there were no complications."

The low growl of a cat cut through the silence as Delphine scrambled for an explanation, Prospero appearing from under her bed to hiss at Rachel. "You took something that didn't belong to you and I would  _like it back_." Cosima frowned at Rachel. "And an explanation, but mostly I just need what you stole." She held out her hand to Delphine, and for a foolish moment Delphine thought she wanted to be touched.

"This is most certainly a  _complication_ , Delphine." Rachel looked increasingly irritated, and Delphine shrank back a little from her tone.

"And where even  _is_  your daemon?" This, to Rachel, incredulous. "Is it so small you can hide it?"

"He is out. It is none of your concern."

Cosima spluttered; Prospero hissed again. "You steal from me and come back here to a  _witch_ , Delphine? Just give me the alethiometer and I can go home, put it back. No one has to know."

Delphine shook her head, curls escaping the tie at the back of her neck. "I'm sorry, but I can't. I don't have it anymore."

Cosima's expression cooled again, the incandescence of her rage doused.

"It's mine, now. And you'll leave it with me, because I can read it, and what I've learned concerns us both." She took a step closer, chin lowering slightly. Cosima took an answering step back. "I'm Rachel Duncan, and I believe you are my sister."


End file.
